


Grave Secrets (with No Graves)

by commas_and_ampersands



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-01-31 09:18:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18588298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commas_and_ampersands/pseuds/commas_and_ampersands
Summary: Mamoru looked back to the little mahogany box sitting open on his desk.  From where he was standing, he could see the four stones lined up next to each other in a solemn, silent row.  Like cemetery markers, he thought, though they didn’t have the luxury of corpses.





	Grave Secrets (with No Graves)

**Author's Note:**

> Written January 2009; revised April 2019.

"We're going to go get something to eat. Bye, Mamo-chan!"

Mamoru didn't actually have a chance to respond.  A door slammed, and he heard the drove of chatting, giggling voices suddenly muffled by the door slamming behind them.   After fifteen seconds passed, he finally let his shoulders sag, the air racing out of his lungs, and he collapsed on the couch.

He didn't know what had made him think it was a good idea for Usagi's friends to come and help him pack up his old apartment.  They were more than capable.  How many times had they saved the universe from certain destruction now? That wasn't the problem.

It's just that they were _exhausting_.

Thank God someone (most likely Usagi) had been hungry enough to call for a break.  Thank God no one had thought to invite him along.  He needed the rest.

Mamoru turned his head, seriously contemplating taking a nap in the cherished, precious silence, and saw a very familiar gold, sequined bag on the opposite side of the room.  It was Minako’s.  He knew because Artemis constantly complained about its hypnotic quality.  Mamoru hadn’t quite understood what he meant until that moment when he looked at it through half-lidded eyes, the gold sparkles dancing along the wall.

"Shiny," Mamoru observed drowsily.  Then he realized the implications of the purse still being there, and he sprung himself to his feet.  Minako was the last person he wanted wandering around his apartment unsupervised.  She was nosy, relentless, and all too happy to blackmail other people for amusement and material gain.

"Minako?" he called.  "Are you still here?"

He found her in his bedroom, staring at something on his desk.  Of course.  He'd told all of them to stay out of his desk, pretending there were important documents and assignments that he needed to go through personally.  He should have known better than to even mention it.  He should have kept his mouth shut and just kept an eye on Minako, because if anyone was going to ignore him and go looking for hidden porn, it would be her.

Unfortunately for them both, she'd found something worse.

She'd found the Shitennou.

"Minako," he said, struggling to keep his voice even and gripping the door frame with his left hand.  His fingers ached against the wood.

She turned, her normally bright, warm eyes gone steel and cold.  He had seen that look before.  People on the receiving end of it had a tendency to wind up dead.

"How long?" she asked, her voice a quiet, almost hoarse scrape.  Did it tremble faintly, or had he imagined that?

Mamoru looked back to the little mahogany box sitting open on his desk.  From where he was standing, he could see the four stones lined up next to each other in a solemn, silent row.  Like cemetery markers, he thought, though they didn’t have the luxury of corpses.

"Minako—"

"How.  Long?"

Mamoru walked forward, intent on shutting the box.  Minako moved in front of him, icy eyes bringing him to a halt.  He didn't think she'd hurt him, but he couldn't be certain.  He definitely wasn't sure she wouldn't lash out at the entombed souls behind her.  He'd never thought to ask them how vulnerable they were in this form.  Mistake after mistake.

"How long have I had a rock collection?" Mamoru asked lamely.  "I fail to see—"

"Don't you dare," Minako snapped, taut as a wire.  A garrote.  "I know what - _who_ they are, and I want to know how long you’ve had them."

Mamoru considered doubling down, feigning still more ignorance, but disregarded it.  Maybe if he hadn't been so tense entering the room, maybe if he hadn't so obviously balked when she looked at him.  Time to concede defeat.  "Four years now."

"You mean you've had them since I killed Beryl?"

Both of them glanced towards the box to see if that would draw a reaction.  Nothing.  She seemed disappointed.

"Before that," he said.  "I found them when I was still possessed and put them in my pocket.  They're what kept me from dying back then."

Minako stared at him, her lips hanging open in amazement.  Then she laughed grimly, shoulders shaking.  She turned and rested her hands on the desk, her arms a cage.  "When were you planning on telling us?"

"Never."  One day, he would have told Usagi.  Sooner rather than later, considering they were moving in together, but he knew instinctively that Minako didn't include Usagi when she said 'us.'  Usagi wouldn't hurt them.  Minako and Rei and the others?  They would.  He didn't know Minako well, but he knew she'd perceive them as a threat.  She had a particularly final way of dealing with threats.  "I knew what you'd do if you found out."

"Do you see me doing anything to them?"

"I'm not exactly comfortable with you being that close to them."

She scoffed.  "Please.  If they thought I was at all dangerous to them, they'd be out here already.  But fine."  With ill grace, she walked away from the desk.  She did not turn around to face him, just moved over to the window, keeping her back to him, straight as an iron wall.

He tried to relax, but he couldn't.  He'd seen her fight too often, watched her smile and lift her hands, placating, just before embedding a boomerang into someone's throat.  Neither Minako nor Venus had much use for surrender.

After a moment, she lifted her hand to touch the glass.  She took a deep breath and said, "They're important to you then?"

The indignity of the question made his temper flare.  "Of course they're important to me.  Aren't you important to Usako?"

Minako tensed again, fingers curling into a fist.  "That is not the same."

"What are you talking about?" Mamoru asked.  "They're my guard.  My friends.  They protect me.  How is it any different?"

"And they've done such a good job of that up to this point.  They've betrayed you twice and tried to kill you how many times?  _I've_ saved you more times than they have."

"What would you know about it?  About them?"  His voice edged closer to shouting with every word.  "I trust them more than I trust you."

Part of him hoped that would hurt her.

But she only sounded pitying.  “Then you're a bigger idiot than I thought.”

They'd never said anything like that to each other.  Then again, they'd barely had much cause to speak to one another at all.  Undoubtedly, this was why.  Truth will out, and honesty cut both ways.

"Unbelievable.  Minako, this has nothing to do with you.  Why do you even care?  If they were going to hurt me, they would have done it by now."

"Why do I even—?" she repeated softly.  After a moment of silence, she made a soft, jagged sound, her back curving in.  Was she... was she crying?  "God, you really don't have a clue, do you?"

"Why don't you just tell me what's so horrible about me not mentioning this to you?"

"Are you really that stupid?  How many times has Usagi been here alone with them?  Just because you think they’re all better and not down to murder any more doesn't mean they are."

A few tiny flicker-flares sparked in the box.  She must have caught the movement out of the corner of her eyes. "Oh, have I insulted their _honor_ now?" she asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.  "That's rich, that's really— Nevermind.  I'm supposed to protect her, and I can't do that if you don't give me information.  I had a right to know, and you know that, Mamoru, or you wouldn't be so upset.

"Why are you so bitter about this?" he snapped.  "You killed two of them.  Wasn't that enough to work out your aggressions?"

"Oh, don't you dare blame me for that!" Minako yelled, finally turning to face him.  He blanched at the look on her face.

She really was crying.  He'd seen it before, of course he had, but never without her battle armor and blood on her hands.  Never in a private moment where he could see the pained hunch in her slim shoulders.  She'd always been powerful, even or perhaps especially in grief.  Now she just looked young.  Wounded.  Betrayed.

"I was protecting her!  That's my job!  If I hadn't done anything, Usagi would have died, you'd probably still be Beryl's slave, so you know.  You're welcome.  Your "friends" certainly wouldn't have given a damn about it.  You don't get to hate me for protecting her.  Or you."

He stared at her for a long time.  Narrowed his eyes.  "You're lying."

He may as well have slapped.  "Oh, _fuck_ you, you—"

"This has nothing to do with Usagi," he said, talking over her.  "Or it's not just to do with her.  This is personal for you.  The way you hate them is personal.  And I want to know why."

"That is none of your business."

"You don't get to be this angry with me and not tell me why."

"And you don't get to demand things of me.  I don't answer to you."

Mamoru didn't know where he got the courage - the temporary insanity - to walk forward, closing the distance between them.  "I deserve to know what's going on."

"There is no place in the known universe where you have any right to talk to me about what you deserve."  She wiped away the smudges of saltwater and mascara from her cheeks.  "Forget this.  Forget you.  Forget h—  _them_.  I'm leaving."

She started to leave.

He grabbed hold of her arm.

Minako gaped at it like she had no idea how it had gotten there, where he'd found the nerve.  "You have ten seconds."

"Minako—"

"Now you have less than ten seconds.  Move, or I make you move."

He held his ground, heart in his throat and fingers shaking against her flesh.  "No."

Something dangerous flashed in her eyes, yellow like the tip of a flame.  And in his mind's eye, he saw her striding across a battlefield leaving blooming, bloody footprints as she marched.  Her hand curled tight around the pommel of her sword, her sharp-linked chain dangling from her fingertips.  Her eyes, sharp and merciless as she tore Zoisite's body to pieces.  She was a guardian, and she was a killer, and he'd made her so very, very angry.

Then Kunzite's voice rang out.

"That’s enough, both of you."

They spun on a tilting, tipping axis, turning to face him, translucent in the half-light, not quite a ghost but certainly not alive.  Minako's breath caught in her throat.  He looked and finally saw past rage and wounded indignation, past duty and vengeful promises.  He saw the core of her, and it was heartbreak.  Then looked back to Kunzite and saw its reflection, the grey to her gold.  His stomach roiled to see the truth of them.

They'd loved each other.  They must have.

"That's enough, Venus," Kunzite intoned, his voice a deep, soothing rumble Mamoru had grown to know and covet so well.  "You've more than made your point."  Then he turned to Mamoru.  "And you should know better.  Let her go."

He did.  He hadn't even realized he was still holding on.

"Of course you listen to him," Minako muttered bitterly.

Mamoru ducked his head, thoroughly and correctly chastised.  "I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have—"

"You tried to take what doesn't belong to you.  Nothing new there."

He flinched.

She looked away from him, dismissing him thoroughly in favor of their shared haunting.  "Kunzite, exactly how many times am I going to have to kill you before it finally sticks?"

Mamoru's heart flipped in panic at the threat, but Kunzite just smiled, slow and wry.  Fond even.  "At least one more, I'm afraid."

She huffed a laugh, flat and humorless, and swiped at her eyes again.  "You should have made him tell me."

Mamoru swallowed his automatic protest that Kunzite could make him do anything.  The lie was too big, too obvious, and they would have rightly laughed in his face.

For his part, Kunzite merely nodded.  "I should have."

"He had no right."

"He didn't."

"Usagi's too important to risk, and you being here is a risk.  I don't care how supposedly reformed you are."

"I know."

She tore a hand through her hair, flinching when a knot snagged on one of her rings.  "And stop agreeing with me."

"I'm sorry," he said, neither looking nor sounding the least bit contrite.  "It's only you happen to be right."

"They would have hurt you," Mamoru said, trying and failing not to feel like he'd intruded on a private moment.  "Or taken you away, and... I need you."

Kunzite looked at him so much more softly now, far gentler than he ever had all those years and wars ago.  "They could not have kept us away forever, my prince, or even for very long.  We're yours, and we always will be."

Hearing that plainly spoken aloud soothed something savage in his chest.  He exhaled sharply through his nose.  "Okay."

"I wouldn't bet on that," Minako said, folding her arms across her chest.  "I don't want you here, and I'm pretty tenacious when I want to be."

Mamoru straightened, preparing to fight her for them again no matter how badly that would end for him, but Kunzite said, "Except the moment she comes back, he's going to tell Usagi about this.  And if she asks you to leave us be - and I think we both know she will - you'll do as she asks.  No matter how much you hate it, you always do what she asks."

"Don't act like you know me."

"I don't not know you."

"You don't get to say that."

He looked so wistful.  Previous to that day, Mamoru never would have thought Kunzite could feel wistful.  He always seemed too solid for something as ephemeral as regret, no matter that he was made up of mist and smoke these days.  "But it's already been said."

She sighed heavily and let her eyes drift shut.  "Yeah.  Yeah, that's you all over, isn't it?"

Kunzite didn't reply.

They stood in stilted silence for at least a full minute.

"When are they coming back?" Mamoru asked, hating how awkward he felt in his own home, with Minako and Kunzite sucking up all the air in the room.

"Any minute probably," Minako said.  "Usagi forgot her phone."

Mamoru caught sight of the painted pink device on his bedspread then, sporting four charms: a grinning bunny, a Three Lights special edition badge, and two Sailor Vs with her trademark salute.

"Then I'd suppose we'd better wait," Kunzite remarked.

So they did, keeping vigil until they heard the bright whispers and soft bickering from the hall, the footfalls and laughter.  The door would open, and Minako would order her soldiers to fall in, and Kunzite would gesture his forward.  Usagi would meet his eyes, perplexed but always prepared to forgive.  And then he would tell them and lay this one last secret to rest.


End file.
